This leaves veteran Adrian Sutil, who has been with the team for 5 years, without a race seat for next year.

Nico last drove in F1 in 2010, when he took a shock pole position at the Brazilian Grand Prix in his debut season. He was not retained however, and has been reserve driver for Vijay Mallya’s outfit ever since.

Mallya praised Nico and Paul for their impressive talent, and thanked Adrian for his years of service:

"Our new line-up means we say 'goodbye' to Adrian Sutil, who has been with the
team since we entered the sport. He has been an integral part of our success over
the past four seasons and we wish him well for the future.
In Paul and Nico we have two extremely talented drivers with tremendous potential.
I think Paul caught the eye of everybody in the pit lane during his rookie season.
His speed, maturity and racecraft confirmed that we were right to believe in him
and we look forward to working with him again next year.
As for Nico, we identified him as a rising star at the end of 2010 and chose to
evaluate him during the course of this season. Despite having only limited time in
the car, he convinced us that he deserved a race seat for 2012."